Wolf Hunt
by Juliette Louise
Summary: Post game. It's been ages untold since the gods of the ancient Elvhen intervened in the lives of mortals, even mortals who have reshaped the fate of Thedas. But these are strange times, and Fen'Harel has never been burdened by the rules.
1. Prologue

Author's notes: Hello all! Welcome to my first DA:I effort. I started this little guy before I even finished the game, and now that I've finally caught up with you all (and completed some hasty rewrites ㈸3) I'm looking forward to continuing.

(Memories/thoughts/Fade activities, and other languages are in italics.)

WARNING WARNING, this story is LIKE ONE BIG SPOILER.**  
><strong>

* * *

><p><span><strong>9:38 Dragon, Skyhold<strong>

_She leaned against the wooden doorframe, arms crossed over her racing heart. As always, he confused her, hurt her even..._

_ ...But the warmth of his mouth lingered on her lips even in the thin, cold air, the feeling of his fingers (like a scholar's, long and elegant) around her arms. On their first meeting, in the blood-soaked and desperate ruins of the Conclave, he'd grabbed her wrist, thrusting her hand forward and up. He held her firm against the buffeting waves of arcane energy thrown off by the Rift, like a nautical figurehead calming an angry sea. He'd hurt her then, almost wrenched her arm from its socket, in fact, those fingers like steel bands around her wrist. Now his touch was soft, but the feeling of it still lingered._

_ Solas half turned toward her, the sharp lines and angles of his face harshly shadowed in the half light. He looked torn, as he always did when they touched. She wanted desperately to confront him, demand to know what in Void his problem was. The Dalish were inclined toward prudery, at least where sex was concerned, but she sensed that this wasn't his problem. Solas was perhaps the least traditional person she'd ever encountered. He didn't wear the _vallaslin_. He disdained the Dalish and their many rules. _

_ They had fought together, narrowly defying death, looking into the very Fade itself, and now she wanted more than just his eyes on her. More than words and phantom kisses and whispers in her dreams. She wanted her pulse to pound from something other than mortal terror. _

_ But she knew that his cool demeanor concealed secrets. He was practically composed of them. Layers and layers of secrets. There was more going on underneath his calm facade than she knew, quite possibly more than she wanted to know. _

_ ...Probably more than she wanted to know. _

_ So she said nothing. She demanded nothing. He was a brilliant man, and a remarkably perceptive one. She refused to believe that he couldn't pick up on her silent proposition. If he could act, he would._

_ "You're so young to have seen so much." He murmured. "I don't want to burden you further."_

_ She had no idea what he was talking about, and she didn't care. A little flare of anger made her eyes narrow and her next breath emerge too quickly. Brilliant, perceptive, and somehow also completely stupid._

_ "I pick my own burdens, _Hah'ren_." She said, her tongue lingering on the Dalish word with perhaps more bitterness than she'd intended. The meaning was somewhere between elder and teacher. _

_ She'd meant it in sarcasm. He was twice her age but certainly not an elder, and he certainly wasn't going to tell her what to do. She was no dewy-eyed maiden, weaving flowers in her hair, asking Mythal to show her her future lover's face in the surface of a calm pool of water. She was a grown woman, the First of Lavellan, the leader of a small but fierce rebellion. She chose who she consorted with, whether it was a good idea or not. _

_ Solas actually flinched, his eyes shutting tight, his hands balling into fists for a moment before going slack again. _

_ "_Ma emma harel_, _Dah'len_." He said finally, softly, and there was no hint of irony in his intonation. His tongue slid off the Dalish as though he'd learned it from birth- as though it were a living language, instead of a half-dead tradition, read haltingly from dusty tomes at weddings and funerals._

_ You should fear me, Child. He'd said. _

_ They stared at each other from across the room in the orangish glow of dusk, wills clashing. If he hadn't wanted her, that would have been that. If he'd belonged to another, she would have moved on gracefully. Even an offense to his propriety, she would have understood. But this, the idea that this distance was for her own benefit, was so patently absurd that she couldn't help but argue. _

_ His eyes met hers, his expression tender, if sad, his eyes so blue they were almost violet in the low light. _

_ She didn't know what he could possibly mean, what she could possibly have to fear from him, and she reflected again that she didn't much care. He could hold his secrets, whatever past deeds he was so horrified by. She had learned to live within moments with Clan Lavellan, a mindfulness borne of necessity. Friends and clan members and lovers came and went, places came and went, sometimes there was joy, but there was more often hardship. She had learned to take her pleasure where and when she could. And to leave the past behind her._

_ And regardless of what he thought, she was a very good judge of character. She'd seen the way his gaze lingered on her. He'd healed her wounds with a touch and a whisper. Spoken to her in his deep, even voice about the legends of their people, the ancient Elvhen and their gods. Whatever he was, he was no threat to her. _

_ She walked over to him and he turned to face her, his gaze falling from her eyes onto her lips. He inhaled deeply._

_ "I have nothing to fear from you." She said, tracing the line of his jaw with her thumb. He looked down at her, his expression turning slowly to one of something like wonderment. "I trust you with my life." She said, holding his gaze. _

_ The breath came out of him in shuddering sigh and suddenly his arms were around her, lifting her, his lips warm, his tongue ghosting over hers. There was something electric about the man, as though the magic that he commanded ran through him even now. As though the Fade he so adored exploring had entered him in turn. Impossibly, he smelled of campfire smoke and the woods after rain, juniper and sage. It was a scent to integral to her time with the Dalish, a thousand summer nights. It made her remember their Mage, in her halla horn headdress, capitulating the Lord of the Hunt under the cold moon._

_ Exhilaration (and surprise) almost made her knees buckle under her, but he put his arms under her backside and lifted her off the ground, her arms around his neck. She wrapped her legs around his waist. He backed them up, approaching her neatly made bed. He deposited her carefully on the coverlet, one hand at the base of her skull, the other under her back. She grabbed him by his tunic and pulled him down with her, his knees coming down between her legs, the wolf's jawbone amulet he always wore awkwardly pinioned between them. _

_ "Know that this is real, _emma vhenan_." He said against her throat, his low voice ragged, before she captured his mouth again. Those two words, even more so than the night that followed, changed everything._

_He had called her, "My heart." _


	2. The Precipice

**9:41 Dragon, Skyhold**

Lavellan woke from a black, bottomless sleep and Cole was by her bedside, her hand in his larger, cooler one. He stroked her knuckles with his thumb.

"Cole." She said, her voice rusty and foreign-sounding. "Does this mean I'm dying?"

Cole put his head on one side, biting at his lower lip, shock-blonde hair falling over one eye.

"Everyone is dying." He said softly, in his matter-of-fact way. "All the time. With every passing moment all mortal beings draw closer to death."

Even through her fever she was able to be amused by this.

"Oh, Sunshine. Your bedside manner could use work. What I meant was, are you present, here, now, because this sickness will kill me? In the very near future?"

He smiled wanly. He liked it when she called him Sunshine.

"I don't know the future. I'm not that kind of spirit."

He sat her up gently, leaning her against him, and passed her a cup of cool water. She drank it gratefully, her eyes sliding closed. When she had drained the glass he lowered her back down into her bed.

"Why do you think of him now?" Cole asked casually, tucking the bedclothes back around her shivering form. She was freezing cold or sweating profusely, sometimes simultaneously.

"Who?" She croaked suspiciously.

"Solas."

Lavellan would have sat up if her head didn't feel like it weighed as much as a boulder.

"Cole, have you been rummaging around in my thoughts?" She said, mortified. She suspected he couldn't help but hear the thoughts of anyone even remotely near him, but it still seemed like she ought to raise some sort of objection.

But his gaze had already gone distant.

"When you finally slept, he pulled you into the Fade with him. You barely remember green rolling hills, mist rising in the cold morning, the song of the Elvehn as they greeted the sun. You remember that sun on your skin. You remember that he held you. You wondered later if it was Arlathan you saw or merely some construct of his mind. You would have asked but when you awoke he was already gone."

Tears sprung, unbidden, to her eyes.

"I was a fool." She said bluntly. "I try not to dwell on my mistakes."

Cole just blinked at her.

"Love is never foolish, or a mistake."

"Who said I loved him?" She snapped, which started her coughing again.

Cole had that puzzled look on his face again.

"No one. I meant that you allowed him to love you."

That broke the floodgates. Tears she had never allowed since his inexplicable departure streamed down her temples and onto the bedclothes.

She had allowed the strange elven apostate into her confidence, not to mention her bed, and he had responded by rejecting her, then vanishing into the forests like a ghost.

She was the Inquisitor. She said nothing. She moved on, and didn't speak a word about it to anyone. People avoided meeting her eyes for a few days, but they were also, blessedly, silent.

Until now.

Cole looked agitated, shifting his weight awkwardly, then sliding out of his chair to sit by her bedside, still clutching her hand.

"I didn't mean to make you cry, Sulahn." He said plaintively, hiding his face in her bedclothes. Cole was the only one of them that ever used her given name, and only when they were alone.

She rustled his hair, so fine and smooth it felt like spidersilk under her hand.

"It's alright, Sunshine. It's not your fault." She said, wondering why she was possibly on her deathbed but somehow not the one being consoled.

"I'm just going to close my eyes again. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel better." She continued, feeling a coughing fit approaching but wanting to wait until she was alone again. There was no use distressing poor Cole further.

He looked up at her sadly, then nodded. He stood, heading for the stairs.

"Rest well, Sulahn." He said.

She waited until she heard the door close behind him, then she coughed bloody foam until blackness swallowed her again.

* * *

><p><em>The Fade, the Beyond, as elves had called it once, could be entered in dreams, even by one totally deaf and blind to the workings of magic. Previously, Lavellan had not often entered the Fade. Perhaps she slept too deeply. Or perhaps it was because she lacked that vital sense, that incomprehensible quality that allowed Mages to cut through the Veil like a blade.<em>

_ The Anchor had enabled her to enter it, her body and intellect whole, and Solas' guidance helped her keep it's features relatively stable. Before and since, she remembered only the barest whispers. Impressions of familiar places, shadows of friends and enemies, feelings without the substance to back themselves up. Just dreams, albeit dreams swathed in a strange profundity._

_ This was different. _

_ It was her quarters, wind whipping snow past her windows, candles guttering, long shadows shifting-but it wasn't. The edges of her vision were hazy and indistinct. The air felt thick and heavy, like she was under water. She'd had enough experience with the Fade to know that she was in it. _

_ In the next moment she saw him. She didn't know if he'd emerged from the darkness of the far corners, or simply winked into existence. He approached her sick bed, swaddled in shadows and an all-encompassing robe, the lines of his form shifting and reforming. He was not the man she remembered, not the same man who had been anchored to the waking world. But when he reached out his hand and touched her face, smoothing her eyes closed, his touch was the same. _

_ "Be still, _lethallan_. You have nothing to fear from me." Solas whispered. His voice was different, faraway sounding, but still had the core of the man she knew inside it. _

_ She snorted._

_ That's not what you said before. She thought, or maybe said._

_ "You taught me differently." He responded._

* * *

><p>Cassandra lay in her bed, hands folded over the turned down edge of her neatly tucked in coverlet.<p>

Like a corpse in repose. She thought, and an image flashed into her mind: Sulahn Levallan, the first leader of the fledgling Inquisition, lying in state in the great hall. She was nestled in an oak coffin lined with aksamite, surrounded by her solemn friends and advisers. Her face was subtly waxy and unreal looking in that way even the master embalmers of the Mortalitasi couldn't quite figure a way around.

Cassandra shuddered and rolled onto her side.

A rainy dawn was already underway. She hadn't slept all night, waiting for someone to knock on her door and tell her the news.

Lavellan, who had fought demons and dragons and legions of men and women who opposed her, was slowly expiring from Bellamis Fever, an illness most likely picked up from an Antivan trade delegation she'd spent nearly a fortnight in negotiations with.

She had mostly ceased to notice that the Inquisitor was Dalish, in the same way that she mostly no longer saw a demon when she looked at Cole or a Magister when she saw Dorian, but this had been a stark reminder. She had lived her early life in total isolation, with only other elves as her companions. Illnesses that humans fought off with hot tea and a day in bed laid her out for weeks.

Cassandra sat up, running a hand through her hair. Now that dawn had broken she could go see Lavellan without seeming like she was keeping a vigil.

No one was in the courtyard. It had been raining all night and mist still hung heavily around the peaks surrounding Skyhold. Her boots squelched in mud. Her eyes felt gritty from lack of sleep, and the cold, damp air made her shiver even under several layers of linen and leather. Her body was hungry but her mind was repulsed by the thought.

She crossed the empty hall, then climbed the stairs, her footfalls silent, until she stood before the Inquisitor's door. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, preparing herself for the worst, then entered.

The room was stuffy and over warm in that way sick people's quarters always were. Cassandra took a deep breath, steadying herself. Outside, fresh rain had started to fall. Inside, the candles had burned all the way down.

She approached Lavellan's bed. When she got closer, she realized that the Inquisitor was still alive, and some of the tension went out of her posture.

Sulahn's cheeks still bore a flush, but she wasn't drenched in sweat as she had been. Cole had brushed and braided her hair (Where had Cole learned to braid? More mysteries of the afterlife, she thought), and it rested on her chest like a heavy golden rope. Her eyes didn't seem to be flickering around under their lids, and she had ceased muttering nonsense. Her lungs no longer burbled and whistled with each breath.

Cassandra touched her cheek, then forehead, then neck, and her heartbeat began to race. Her fever seemed to have broken. She went down onto her knees by the Inquisitor's bedside, teetering, then slumped into a seated position on the floor, head bowing, shoulders rolling forward.

She whispered her thanks to the Maker in her mother tongue, tears rolling down her face and onto the floorboards.

When she was steadier she ran to wake the healers.


	3. The Tevinter Loremaster

After the fever finally broke, Lavellan's recovery was swift. Dorian's best attempts to keep the Inquisitor in her bed were met with little success. Before very long she was, to his consternation, venturing out into the grounds, a bit pale and quiet but otherwise well. She sat alone on the parapets in the frigid dusk, but at least she wore furs and was still. Dorian soon resigned himself to the fact that this was as close to resting as they were likely to get from her. Still, the Inquisitor was very quiet, withdrawn even, which was thoroughly out of character for her.

A week passed, then another. Color returned to her face, and her gait became sure and steady again. But she spent all her time either on the needs of the Inquisition or in the library, leafing through stacks of books.

Dorian considered Sulahn Lavellan his friend, and it stung that she had no interest in talking with him, particularly since she had just very nearly died. But Lavellan was also perpetually occupied with matters of state, not to mention under a tremendous amount of pressure. She would speak to him, he reasoned, when a free moment arose.

He just hadn't expected that moment to arise in the middle of the night.

He was roused from a sound, dreamless sleep by a polite but still somehow frantic knocking on his door.

"Dorian. It's Lavellan." She whispered from the other side.

He shot out of bed, wondering what kind of metaphysical shit they'd stepped in now. Dragons? Darkspawn? Vengeful gods? More highly-improbable tears in the fabric of reality?

Dorian threw open the door, just happy, for the moment, that he'd slept with trousers on.

Lavellan stood in a floor-length emerald green robe, her hair unbound, an oil lamp in one hand. Her eyes were wild, even in dim light.

"Maker, Lavellan, what is it?" He asked breathlessly, pushing hair out of his eyes.

Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but nothing emerged. Finally, she took a breath, seemingly centering herself, and spoke.

"Just...come with me. It's easier to show you."

Dorian felt his way back over to his robe and threw it on hurriedly, then stepped into his boots. The castle was freezing cold even when it wasn't the dead of night, at the tail end of winter. He also took his stave from its customary spot by his bedside table, just in case.

They wound down dark corridors, Dorian following the swishing hem of her long robes, growing more curious, and more tense, by the moment. Finally, they climbed the stairs to the Inquisitor's quarters. Turning the corner, he saw...

...Nothing. Or at least, nothing unusual. Her bed was unmade and covered in piles of books and loose parchment. From her windows, he could just barely see a few stars shining over the peaks of dark mountains. A sharp wind rattled the panes. A few oil lamps cast a wan glow that couldn't quite penetrate into the dark corners of the room.

She sat on one of the few empty spots on her bed, and picked up a candlestick in an iron holder. She squeezed her eyes shut, clearly concentrating, and the candle lit.

Under some circumstances, this would not have been so remarkable. An eight-year-old Dorian could have, had he been so inclined, burned his family's estate to the ground with a snap of his fingers. But Lavellan had no magic in her, except for the very specific (albeit impressive) powers of the Anchor.

"I was...I was reading. And my bedside lamp ran out of oil, and I thought...I thought..." She trailed off.

"You thought, 'I'll light that candle'."

She nodded, looking around her quarters like she expected the answer to be there somewhere.

Dorian sat beside her, taking the candle and setting it on her bedside table. He took her hands in his.

"Close your eyes, Sulahn." He said. She looked up at him skeptically, frowning.

"I promise not to do anything _untoward_." He added, moving his eyebrows up and down in an exaggerated gesture of salaciousness.

She snorted, and closed her eyes.

"Too bad, that." She sighed, or maybe just thought in a...sigh-like fashion. He was already rummaging around in her mind and it was hard to tell.

Dorian followed her conscious thoughts for the briefest moment, then let them pull him, like an undertow in still water, down into what lay beneath.

He'd had limited experience delving into elven minds, and all of it with slaves in Tevinter. This was different. Sulahn was Dalish, full of distinctly elven thought and experience.

_Autumn in the woods. The smell of the smoke hut, strips of game dangling overhead. Cold air turns bitter as winter comes. So sudden. Numb fingers on the bowstring. None of the beautiful subtlety of spring. Snow comes ripping over the Marches and buries their fire pits and their tiny altars to the gods._

The gods...

That led him to the _vir'abelasan_, a roiling core of arcane knowledge and bodiless voices that threatened to pull him in. He gave it a wide berth, having absolutely no desire to tangle with an ancient Elvehn artifact called the Well of Sorrows (for Maker's sake, it said it right there in the name).

He felt the Anchor as well, a literal void, an empty, hungering space. It was very out of place in her mind, or any mind, really. It was not something that a mortal being, mage or otherwise, was meant to house. It was a miracle that Solas had successfully cordoned it off and kept it from killing her, or at the very least driving her spectacularly insane. Dorian could feel the echoes of Solas' magic, psychic wards still holding fast against the little piece of raw Fade in her mind. Their former companion had been callous and pompous and had his head firmly up his own backside, but Dorian had to hand it to him: he was a mage of considerable ability.

These artifacts of the magic Sulahn had encountered were no surprise to him. They were foreign, not the product of her own mana. He went deeper.

And it was there, beneath her earliest memories and primal half-realized instinct: a tiny kernel of magic that was distinctly hers, glowing in the dark like the little candle flame that had alerted her to its presence in the first place.

Dorian gasped and released her hands, surprised. Lavellan was frozen in place, looking at him expectantly.

"Well?" She asked.

"You've never been magic sensitive?" He asked, though he knew the answer already.

"Absolutely not. The Keeper would have known. You would have known."

"Well," he said matter-of-factly, "You are now. But don't ask me how. In all my years of study I've never known magical ability to just...spring up. Or even be deliberately planted."

Tevinter's Magisters knew, as far as he was concerned, all there was to know about magic. This was at least partly because of Tevinter's nearly endless supply of people regarded as "expendable", and the Magisterium's lack of scruples regarding experimentation others considered unsavory, dangerous, or inhumane.

He remembered being taught that Magisters had tried, in the past, to induce magical ability in the non-sensitive. Predictably, this had not ended well. Trying to change the fundamental properties of a person's mind never did.

Dorian shivered. "No. Magical ability can not just...happen to someone."

Lavellan sighed and crossed her arms over her chest, staring off into nothingness.

"Well, actually...ah. Hmm." She said, gesturing helplessly. "I had a sort of...unusual experience."

Dorian felt an eyebrow arching.

"Andraste's tits, Inquisitor. You've got a key to the Fade and a collection of ancient, mystical _Elvhen_ knowledge lodged in your brain. You have a Spirit of Compassion, a Grey Warden, and a big pile of mages as housemates. And then, of course, there's the darkspawn demi-god, dragons, demons, Fade-walking..."

"No, no." She said, totally missing his sarcastic tone. "After all that."

"Ah." He said dryly. "_After_ that."

She turned to look at him, her eyes wide and earnest, lips parted.

"I haven't told this to anyone, Dorian." She looked away. "Mostly because I wasn't sure there was anything to tell. Now...it seems as though there is.

You know that Solas and I spent a great deal of time together. I always sensed that there was...more to him. At the time I supposed it was just from all that time spent in the Fade. All the weird arcane study. Because let's be honest, you mages are all a bit strange around the edges." She said, giving him a little smirk and a poke with her elbow.

"But, of course, he disappeared. Then, when I was so ill, laying here, dying...I knew I was dying... And suddenly I was in the Fade. I never enter the Fade in dreams, at least not like this.

Solas was there. I'm sure it was him. It was him, but it...also wasn't. I can't explain. He sat by my bedside. He spoke to me. I didn't understand most of it, only a few words. Ancient _Elvhen_. No one speaks ancient _Elvhen_. Not for millennia."

Dorian twirled his mustache thoughtfully.

"He did translate for us in the Dales, and Mythal's temple." He reminded her, not exactly sure where she was going with this.

Lavellan nodded, holding up a finger.

"Yes. He translated. Snippets. Words here and there. That, I might believe to be possible from sifting through old memories in the Fade. But he was speaking fluently in this...dream, or whatever it was. He put his hand on my head and heart and spoke to me in a language that's been dead since _Elvhenan_ fell. A language that was developed in total cultural isolation, before humans even arrived on these shores.

And then I lived, and I know damn well no one expected me to. And now, suddenly I'm using magic."

Dorian nodded thoughtfully. Individually, none of it was conclusive evidence of anything strange or mystical. Solas could have learned _Elvhen_ in the Fade. Lavellan could have suddenly recovered. And she might have had latent talent with magic that none of them had picked up on...but taken together it was certainly an unlikely chain of events. And after the last few months he would have been an idiot to discount...basically anything.

"Have you found anything in your studies?" He asked her, at a bit of a loss. He had the finest magical education money could buy, which, since he was Tevinter, included absolutely naught about elves.

"I have a few of them, all fairly insane." She flashed a tired grin at him. "But if any of them are correct, it would be a good idea to track our old friend Solas down."

"Yes, well, before any of us go galavanting off after our wayward ex-cohort, you should really try to nail your magical abilities down." He cleared his throat. "Since you can apparently start fires."

* * *

><p>As the weeks passed they spent a great deal of time together, usually in the library or the solarium. Lavellan didn't bring up the experience with Solas-or who she'd presumed was Solas-again. For the time being, they focused on metaphysical theory. Between the Anchor, the Well of Sorrows, and now a sensitivity to magic, she was a significantly powerful being. She needed a good base of knowledge behind her abilities, not to mention serious mental conditioning. That was true in Tevinter, Ferelden, Orlais, where ever mages were found-the first thing a magic user learned was how to not use their abilities. Or else the cat got scorch marks and neighboring farmers dug up potatoes with eyes. <em>Real<em> eyes.

So they read, and wrote, and meditated, and discussed dreadfully boring tomes from his childhood like Magister Madiero Ribisi's _Treatise Arcanium _at great length. He would have liked to consult the other mages (who always seemed to be around) regarding her newfound talent, but Lavellan was firmly unwilling to share this news with anyone other than him, at least for the moment.

He'd always liked Sulahn. In fact, she was probably the best friend he had. Spending a great deal of time with her doing something other than killing people was, in fact, quite pleasant. She had a sharp wit and an interesting perspective. When she told him about the elven approach to magical tradition he didn't even want to gouge his eardrums out (unlike when Solas had done the same). Everything seemed to be going well.

Then, one mild spring day, he found her in the tavern with Iron Bull, totally obliterated on some truly horrible Qunari liquor. Before lunchtime.

When Dorian strode in, approaching their table, three bleary eyeballs focused him. An unreadable look passed over Lavellan's face.

"Dorian." She slurred. "Just the person I wanted to see."

Dorian felt one of his eyebrows shoot up.

"Oh?" He asked suspiciously.

Bull patted the spot on the bench next to him.

"Sit down, _Kadan_, there's-" He paused to belch impressively. "-intrigue afoot."

Dorian's eyes were watering from the utterly toxic air that had just emerged from Bull. He waved away the lingering fumes, snorting, and sat.

"Yeeeas?" Dorian said hesitantly, wondering what kind of shitstorm he was about to be dragged into.


End file.
